


Another Kind of Therapy

by mightierthanthecanon



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Murder Family, Power Dynamics, Sleepwalking WIll Graham, hannibal is an asshole
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 12:30:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightierthanthecanon/pseuds/mightierthanthecanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Will was falling apart at the seams, spilling over until he couldn’t tell himself from his cases, from his coworkers, or from his…he always felt like he was grasping at sand when he tried to clarify his relationship with Dr. Lecter in his mind, so he shied away from trying to put a name on it and focused on the one thing he was clear on. The truth.</p><p>Abigail Hobbs murdered Nicholas Boyle and Dr. Hannibal Lecter helped her hide the body."</p><p>After Hannibal comes clean about his secret with Abigail, Will finds his own way of dealing with their betrayal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

7:30 pm, on the dot, and Will Graham was standing on Dr. Lecter’s doorstep. He would have liked to say he found himself there, that he lost time and couldn’t be held responsible for his actions, but that wasn’t the case. Will was falling apart at the seams, spilling over until he couldn’t tell himself from his cases, from his coworkers, or from his…he always felt like he was grasping at sand when he tried to clarify his relationship with Dr. Lecter in his mind, so he shied away from trying to put a name on it and focused on the one thing he was clear on. The truth.

Abigail Hobbs murdered Nicholas Boyle and Dr. Hannibal Lecter helped her hide the body. He helped her hide the body. Will shuddered from his very bones. The part of him who violently rejected the idea that Abigail Hobbs, the innocent victim he was trying so hard to protect and keep safe, had murdered Nicholas Boyle, was fighting for dominance over the part of him who loved that fact, relished it, and was boiling over with the need to relive her kill over and over again. Will shook his head in a desperate attempt to get the images out of his mind.  _It’s 7:34pm, I’m in front of Hannibal’s office and my name is Will Graham._  He knocked on the door and waited, with a knot in his stomach he wished wasn’t there. When Hannibal opened the door, his stomach twisted even tighter.

”Hi.” Barely one syllable and Will could hardly get the word out. It had always struck Will as warm and inviting, the way Dr. Lecter opened his door to friends. Patients, he amended. And accomplices, his broken mind supplied. Usually, he felt as though he was coming home—Dr. Lecter’s office being more comfortable to Will than his own house, with all its strays. Tonight, it felt different, Hannibal’s body a little tenser than normal, his movements even more controlled. Looking up at him, Will saw something nebulous in the good doctor’s eyes that he could not identify, and for the first time, hesitated on the threshold. Hannibal noticed, of course. Hannibal notices everything. However, his expression did not change at all. If anything, his eyes focused on Will even more, to the point where it felt like Hannibal was looking inside of him. 

"Will. I wasn’t sure that I would see you today," the doctor began, his hands lightly resting on either side of the door frame.

Will grimaced and rubbed at his eyes. It was pointless conversation, clearly meant to gauge Will’s reaction. But they both knew it didn’t matter. Will knew the truth. Hannibal was aware of that, and yet no one was showing up at his door with handcuffs. Will set his jaw and looked back to Hannibal. There were a million reasons why he should have left. A million reasons why he should have called Jack, or Alana, or anyone, and tell them the total and complete truth, his own safety be damned. He didn’t. In spite of everything, Hannibal was always there, and would always be there. His appointments, his ridiculously meticulous outfits, even the way he managed to get inside Will’s head without invading and desecrating it—these things were a part of Will’s life now and, for good or bad, Hannibal was as well. No matter how much he may have wanted to deny it, even Will knew that losing Hannibal to the FBI would probably push him farther away from sanity, if not over the edge entirely. And so he stayed.

"We had an appointment," Will sighed, defeated. Hannibal nodded benevolently and turned aside so Will could come into his apartment. 

"Yes," Hannibal agreed, the barest trace of a smile gracing his features as Will stepped over the threshold. "We did."

And that’s when Will realized what it was. The look in Hannibal’s eyes, the smile on his face, even the way he filled up the doorway like any space could be a way out. Predatory.

Hannibal was the predator; Will was the prey.

And he went willingly into the pit.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal and Will have their session. And someone (probably not at all) unexpected shows up.

It was rare for them to have conversations—appointments, Will reminded himself—in  Dr. Lecter’s office. It was even rarer still for Will and Hannibal to sit in the traditional patient and therapist chairs, but this is where Dr. Lecter had led him and where Will had gratefully followed. It was one thing to discuss the utter dismantaling of your existence, but it was another thing entirely to do it in a living room or a kitchen where one had previously bared one’s soul. Hannibal directed Will to his chair, standing close enough to touch. Will glanced up at him, scowling.

"I’m—"  _I’m fine. I don’t need any help. I think I can manage sitting in a chair, thanks._  A myriad of phrases were on the tip of his tongue, but Will remained silent. Will wasn’t a liar, but he also wasn’t about to admit that his recent realization had causesd a tiny bit more than a mental imbalance. The struggle to find words that fit, words that were…true, rendered him silent, and he vibrated with the beginnings of unexpressed rage. He sat down carefully and glanced up, searching into the eyes of his pseudo-therapist and sometimes friend. Even Will didn’t know what he was looking for, but it appeared Dr. Lecter was back to being his gauge, his anchor, like he could save Will from drowning. That didn’t help at all.

Shifting uncomfortably in his chair and looking around the room as if the very walls were now undeserving of his trust, Will opened his mouth and waited for the words to come out. His lips moved, but Will made no sounds. His mind was moving too quickly for his mouth to keep up. Will licked and bit at his lips, irritated. Had his body begun to betray him as well?

"You don’t look well, Will," Dr. Lecter offered, leaning back slightly in his chair to better assess him. Will barked out a laugh and covered his eyes with his right hand, massaging his temples with enough force that Hannibal added, with genuine concern, "Have you been having difficulty sleeping?"

"Difficulty sleeping?" Will’s eyebrows shot up and his face muscles twitched in a painful facsimile of a smile. "Yes," Will retorted bitterly, but once he started talking to Hannibal, it was often difficult to stop, and the words kept coming.  _At least in that respect_ , the part of Will that was not spilling his soul to Hannibal noted,  _nothing has changed_. “I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can barely do my job, Jack is breathing down my neck.”Will fairly threw himself out of the chair and begun to pace, unconsciously moving towards and away from his therapist. Dr. Lecter merely observed him.

"I’m having difficulty recognizing who I am…and who I’m not. I don’t want to talk to anyone because I know the looks I’ll see on their faces. I don’t want to be awake because I can’t stand feeling like this. I don’t want to go to sleep because I am sick of waking up God knows where and taking rides from policemen! I feel like—" Will grimaced and rolled his shoulders "—I feel like I’m drowning in myself, and every buoy I see becomes an anchor as soon as I reach for it." He sighed heavily and retreated back into the chair, crossing his arms around himself. Was that true? Was it an exaggeration? An understatement? Will didn’t know. He glanced up at Hannibal.

"You’ve made a career out out of connecting yourself to a crime in order to find your way to the killer, Will," Hannibal explained. Will set his jaw, refusing Dr. Lecter’s diagnosis, but part of him saw the truth in it, and he nodded slowly. "With Abigail Hobbs—" Will’s eyes flickered to the floor, concentrating almost solely on his shoes, but Hannibal continued on without stopping, a pointed glance in Will’s direction the only indication he’d noticed anything. "—it was your connection to —" He paused.

"The killer," Will finished heavily. Abigail Hobbs. He had yet to call Abigail Hobbs a killer in his mind. Will forced himelf to do it now. His mind, his body and every part of him recoiled. Will had to repress a shudder, but glanced back at Dr. Lecter and forced himself to start again, "It was my connection with the killer that allowed…no." Will made an expression somewhere between a grimace and a smile. He started again, "It was my connection with the killer that prevented me from seeing the crime." Will flexed his feet and ran his fingers through his hair. Neither his mind nor his body accepted the fact that Abigail, like him, and Dr. Lecter, had murdered someone. 

Dr. Lecter looked at him consideringly. “Abigail is a killer,” he affirmed, “but she is also an innocent.” His eyes softened almost imperceptibly, and he continued, “Killing someone in self-defense does not make her a murderer, Will”. Dr. Lecter was talking about him, Will knew. He knew he wasn’t a killer. Will knew he wasn’t to blame for the death of Garret Jacob Hobb’s death, but the FBI special agent in him wanted so badly to punish himself for Hobbs’ death that it was almost impossible not to want to punish Abigail Hobbs for her sin.  _Sins._  His mind corrected him. Abigail wasn’t only a murderer.

"No," Will countered, "but telling me —" he broke off, overcome with an emotion he wasn’t expecting. Will smiled uneasily. Anything was better than the storm of indefinable emotions that usually ruled his thoughts. Will singled out the emotion of betrayal, and clung to it like a drowning man. He closed his eyes for the space of a heartbeat and took a deep, steady breath. "Abigail Hobbs lied, Dr. Lecter," Will hissed through his teeth. 

Hannibal studied Will’s flushed face for a moment. Whatever he was looking for, he found. “True,” Hannibal agreed, gazing inexplicably across the room. “Abigail is guilty of more than the sin of murder, she is guilty of betrayal.” He shifted towards his desk and steepled his hands above his knees. “Isn’t that right, Abigail?” 

Abigail Hobbs straightened up from her hiding place in the far side of the room. “Yes,” she admitted softly. At the sound of her voice, Will’s head whipped around and stared at her accusingly. Abigail Hobbs faltered, stricken by the depth of anger in Will’s face, but she eventually made her way to the front of his chair. Hannibal looked on with a ghost of a smile as Abigail stood before the implacable figure of Will Graham. “I truly am sorry, Will,” she asserted, “I only meant to—”

Will held up a hand. Gazing at Abigail frozen before him, waiting for him to tell her what to do, he had never felt so alive.

"Stop," Will warned, his voice barely above a whisper. He could feel anger thrumming through him, with lust quickly on its heels. Will leveled his gaze on Hannibal, waiting for a reproach, a reprieve or some quietly voiced concern from the good doctor. None came. After a moment of silent observation, Dr. Lecter inclined his head slightly. Will smirked, turning back to Abigail. 

 _This is my design_.

"On your knees," he ordered, flexing his fingers.

Abigail knelt. 


End file.
